Go to HSLDA web site and find out what your state laws are and if you can file a religious exemption to home school. I schooled in Nebraska and you could either homeschool for religious reasons or file Chapter 13 as a private school.

[quote="jacquekr"]I wouldn't say that I was a school "bully" but I was definitely on the other side of teasing. I look back at the time I spent in school and feel horrible because of my constant teasing and making fun of other kids.

It's not just public school, it's EVERYWHERE!! Just thought I would add my 2 cents here. My oldest daughter is begging to homeschool again this year due to bullying, gossip, threats, etc. by mostly the girls at school. She attends a PRIVATE school (not a Christian school as far as the curriculum, but being in the south, Christian values and morals are a big part of the school environment). Being private evidently exempts them from following the same rules public schools have to follow, like having a "bullying policy". Unfortunately, living in a small town where everyone knows everyone, I have also found the parents sometimes are just as much to blame for the gossip as the kids, creating a bad environment all the way around. The teachers have "blacklisted" her I think, and the administration didn't take me seriously on the damage that bullying was taking on my daughter. I even took a picture of her text message from two girls saying they were going to beat her up on Monday, called her every name in the book, using the F word several times, saying they weren't afraid of the F'ing school, and dared her to open her mouth, blah, blah, blah. I went to school that Monday morning, asking the headmaster if he had a minute for me, and he told me he had 5 minutes, then told the coach on the way into his office with me to knock on his door in 5 minutes.... made me feel real important, that did! Anyway, I showed him the printout of the text message, complete with the phone number, they even put their names on it, and time/date of the message. Because it wasn't done on school time, at school, or with school property, there was nothing they could do. He told me to file charges with the police. It took me a few minutes to even talk him into letting her come to the office during lunch and "study hall", because she was afraid of getting beat up. He just didn't think it was a big deal. Well, to her it was. She stands up for herself, took on a girl about 60 pounds heavier after Christmas break, but she was afraid to take on two girls at once. This is a small school, about 325 kids from Pre-K through 12, so I can just imagine what kids do at the really large schools!

It's very unfortunate the toll bullying has taken on my daughter, and we really didn't realize what the cause behind her angry, bad behavior was until I saw the show on Dr. Phil about bullies. That was a real "light bulb" moment for me, these kids were expressing exactly what my daughter had been saying, and the effects on them were the same. My daughter has gone downhill since moving to this school in 4th grade (she is going into 8th this fall). At first it was your usual clique crap. Then in 5th grade, I hate to admit it, but the major bullying done that year was done by her teacher, and I didn't believe her until towards the end of the year when my job went part-time, and I started picking them up on Mondays so I could read the board and talk to the teacher to find out what was due that week, as my daughter's grades had started to slide, and she was not completing her assignments as she should. I found this older teacher to be very "dry", but I never confronted her with my daughter's accusations. Living in a small town, where everyone knows everyone, and half are related one way or another, it's hard to "make waves" without causing yourself a lot of grief. By the end of 5th grade my happy kid was an angry girl, didn't get along with most of the girls, hated school, and her self esteem was pretty much gone. The teacher coming up for the next year wasn't much better, I could tell just by her body language she didn't like my daughter, and in the 2 years we attended the school and it's functions, this lady had yet to look me in the eye or return a "hello", so I allowed her to homeschool that year. She went back this last year for 7th, and things really hit the fan this year. She had so many problems with the girls. She ended up hanging with the "trashy" girls, because they were the only ones who would hang out with her, but throughout the year they were "on again, off again", and when they were off the gossip and harrassment got pretty severe! She was called every name you could imagine, and hanging with this group just got her in touch with other trouble-making kids who went to public school, which just added to her problems, because then the teachers just classified her as a troublemaker like the others, and didn't bother to work with her, help her, or anything. When I contacted the "counselor" and complained about the bullying problems, and teachers not keeping in contact with me with what was going on, he told me "why don't you just homeschool her again if she doesn't like it here". I found that totally unacceptable and shocking that he actually said that, and was in tears when I got off the phone, and I'm not usually an "emotional" mother. I contacted the mother in charge of the parent association, and she said her daughter had lots of gossip and harrassment problems at that age as well, it was pretty much 7th and 8th grade where most of that happened. I find it unacceptable that we have to "put up" with this stuff as "status quo" for the age group. I realize a lot of her problems with the "preppy" girls stem from her "friend group", and even when she tried to dump the bad kids as friends, she couldn't fit in with the other crowd anyway. I even had a dad call my husband at work, saying he was very concerned for our daughter, his kids had overheard her say she was going to kill herself because she hated school so much. Luckily that didn't happen, but she has spiraled downward so far, I'm afraid she will never be the same. She finally broke down the other night, sobbing, begging to homeschool again. I am working full time now, so am hoping her grandmother will agree to take her during the day so she can homeschool this year. Unfortunately, since we are in such a rural area, there are not a lot of options available.

My reason for pulling my daughter out of public school is a little different. My daughter has always made friends fairly easy. When she hit middle school it was the same. She made friends with ease. My daughter has always been a high acheiver. She had always been on the honor roll and always loved school. Every summer she couldn't wait until school started again. We moved her to different schools trying to find one that could challenge her. We finally moved her to a prep school for middle school. Sixth grade was ok, she liked it and said it definetly challenged her. When summer came around she couldn't wait for 7th grade to start. In 7th grade she started having problems with a girl who supposedly was her best friend. Once 7th grade started the girl no longer liked her. My daughter seemed troubled but eventually put it behind her. Then during the summer between 7th and 8th she wanted to go to summer school just so she wouldn't be bored and also in our district if you have perfect attendance you get a gift certificate for $150. Summer school would turn out to be my worst mistake, it would take a few months before I would realize it though. At summer school my daughter met a girl one grade below her who was a practicing wicca. She was also into cutting. Unbeknown to me a child that one of the families in our church got custody of was also very involved in cutting. Between these two girls my daughter was convinced that cutting would help her to deal with the mounting frustrations at school. The school being a prep school gave out a lot of homework, 4 - 5 hours a night was not uncommon. My daughter was feeling that school was the only life she had. The work wasn't hard she just got tired of doing it. So when she was frustrated she would cut. The first time she did it, it was small and discreet. I figured it was just a passing facination and wouldn't happen again. Little did I know. When I finally found out that the problem had not gone away and to what extent she was doing this I was shocked and scared. I prayed for my daughter and began to spend more time with her. She had become a rather difficult child to live with. She angered easily and argued all the time with me and her dad. Finally one day she was sitting there and just began to cry when I asked her what was wrong she told me to leave her alone. I told her I was there when she was ready to talk. A few minutes later she really burst out crying and said "mom I can't do this any longer, its gotten to big for me and I need help". That was the start of her recovery. She told me she was so glad to have finally told someone. A couple of days later she asked to be homeschooled. My husband and I immediately agreed to it. Her grades by this time were F's. We restarted the 8th grade 3 weeks before Christmas and finished by the end of June. My daughter no longer needs to cut to deal with things. She is like a totally different child. She likes to spend time with me and we are once again very close to one another. She doesn't argue hardly ever anymore and if she does she always apologizes for it. She is doing great in school and hopes to one day marry a preacher and evangalize using her knowledge in the Spanish language. She figures someday she may meet a young person who is cutting to deal with things and she will be able to help them. She once told me she had a dream several months after she left her old school and it was that I was called to the school because there was some concern about her behavior. When they called her down from class, when she walked in she was dressed all in black and had black finger nail polish on and black eyeliner (she had not left the house that way but had changed when she got to school). She said in the dream that she no longer wanted to be a Christian and had been intiated into the wicca two weeks prior. She told me that she believes that if she had stayed at that school, God was trying to show her what would have become of her. Also during her bad time she always wore a lot of black, almost always all black. She dresses much different now she never wears all black anymore and if she wears a black skirt she always wears bright color tops. I had to finally get over the fact that I made the mistake of putting her into public shool to begin with in third grade. If I had it to do all over again.

Renata, wow! What an ordeal to go through. I had a friend who had a daughter who cut herself on forarms and the inside of her legs. We tried to tell her that she needed counciling...(mom was a councilor herself) but she thought she could handle it on her own. She wasn't even willing to aske God for help. It got so bad that they ended up institutionalizing her for a period of time. I will be praying for you and your family in my daily devotions.

I just joined this board today and was looking through and thought I would share why I have decided to pull my 9 year old daughter out of public school. Kelsey like you daughter has always gotten good grades. She is bored with school also. Everyone brags on her about getting A's in EVERY subject and her reply is what do you expect they don't teach me anything I don't already know...LOL She was in the 3rd grade last year and testing in 4 of the 5 core subjects at a 6th grade level. This year she is in the 4th grade and still testing at the same levels...so my question at parent teacher conference was "What did she learn in the 3rd grade?". She is reading on a 6th grade level, but yet they insist on encouraging her to read books on a 4th-5th grade level. Why? I don't know. They didn't have an answer for me. All they could tell me is that if they gave her special treatment that the other kids would fall behind.

Now I understand that statement but in the same sense, Kelsey is not being challenged. Then came the 4 weeks of evolution in Science class. Every night we would spend time in Genesis undoing what they had done for the day. The didn't call it evolution but they talked about animals evolving into other animals (i.e. a bird to a fish) during that time. My husband told her to ask her teacher if humans evolved from apes, why there were still apes in the world. When somethign evolves it changes the old part doesn't stay around. I didn't want someone to teach my child that didn't care about whether she was being challenged or not. Who didn't care whether she was smarter or not. It was like they were telling her to slow down and not do so good.......let the other kids catch up. In their mission statement they talk about a commitment to academic excellence. I don't see it.

I like the initial post on this thread in Dec. at Christmas break will be pulling my daughter out of school and starting HS in Jan. She is so excited about it. Everyday is a challenge to get her to go to school. She has lots of friends and does well there but she just doesn't like going because she is bored. She would quit now if I let her. The reason we are waiting is for me to get organized. I have curriculum on order and hopefully it will all arrive in enough time for me to study up and get more organized.

I am so glad your daughter is doing well. Kelsey, like your daughter wants to marry a preacher. My husband is a preacher (well he will have his license soon but he already preaches at several area churches. He is currently in the course of study to become a licensed minister in the Methodist faith, to be completed by June 2007).

God bless and keep up the good work of loving your daughter better than anyone else here on earth could ever love her.

Jeannie

Mother to 13 children, Wife to an extraordinary husband, Richard, and a believer in Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13

I have just about went to jail over my children. For some reason a school system thinks they own our children. I have 5 boys from 10-22 and have been through hell with my guys and the schools. I home school my 15 yr. and my 10and 12 go to public . I have mixed feelings on school. Safety is my biggest issue a 10th gr. just slashed a 9th graders neck this week. and i think what the how can this keep happening and my children will not be next . so i really think elementary is as far as the little two will see. I am currently studying crimnial justice and one of my goals is children stopping the volience in our children.

Chemistry man wrote:I am very sorry to hear all the problems you have shared about your kids in public schools. I do not have a questions for all of you.

What will you do if your kids (or adults) are teased in a social setting? If they ever play on a play ground and teased I hope you do not plan to leave the community and move out or file police complaints. I hope you will tell your kids to leave the jobs when they are teases or make fun of in their professiona lives? Are you all planning to be by your kids side for all their lives? Just wonder..

I am not sure the solution is to take the kids out of schools and keep them in mommy's lap. Education involves providing opportunities where kids feel confident. My opinion...

Chemistry man wrote:Good luck to you! Public school life is real and in this changing society I am not sure kids growing under such a shelter as you have described can survive independently. Good Luck!

Umm, Troll?? Wow, what a silly, silly person. You are what, like 15? At least the quality of your writing tells me that much. I hope that when you do have children (a long, long time from now) that you will have grown up some.

Well, my situation is a bit the same and a bit different than most here. I have 2 boys ages 16 and 13. My oldest son moved back to our homestate of New Hampshire to live with his dad because the schools here in Connecticut are awful.
My youngest son, wow. Where do I begin. He was diagnosed 4 years ago with Bipolar disorder and adhd along with severe learning disabilities. I seriously have done nothing but fight with the school for his rights since. It has been awful, absolutly awful. He has been bullied his whole life, especially since moving to a big city with lots of diversity, from a small little NH town.
Back in October of this year things escilated to a point where the school had my son arrested. It is a very long story, but the case was dropped because the courts said it was the schools fault.
Anyway, I was going to wait until after Christmas vacation and then pull him out to homeschool him. But I did it last week. He just couldn't take the stress of the whole mess anymore, and I couldn't either.
Just making the final choice to homeschool after a year of thinking about it has made a world of difference for my son, and myself. We no longer have the stress and anxiety of "what is going to happen today" and all the time and energy I put into fighting for his special needs rights and everything else can now be put into teaching him the way he needs to learn.
I don't know how many others on this forum have a child with special needs, but to get up and have a fight free, stress free morning is a God send.
My son who has always hated school, reading, any type of work, is now extreemly hard for me to keep up with as we are learning how to do this together. He even wants to work on Saturdays!
I know I am scared about making sure he learns enough and everything, but in my heart I know this was the right choice...the only choice, and I should have done it years ago.

I am glad this thread popped up today.
We pulled the kids from PS last Tuesday, and I know I have to give us ALL time to adjust and get use to the idea and reality of Homeschooling. They have been ill this last week, so although we have done a little since- they are still in the "I am home, it is play time" mode.

Anyway... Goodness our story with my 7 (8 in March) DS could almost duplicate yours.

He attended Pre-K at our PS. This was something that I was adament about. Before that, since his birth we had move around quite a bit. We finally seemed to settle here almost 4 years ago (the longest we have ever been in 1 place - which will hopefullly remain the same).

During that year, notice came out that the PS was cutting PE, Art, and Music from their curriculum. We had issues with that. Those subjects are VERY important to us as well as the Core subjects. The idea of those subjects even being continued in classroom was met with deaf ears. We lisitened to the typical daily schedule of a normal day in Kindergarten and first grade. The normal day consisted of sitting at a desk working on Math and Language Arts (reading, writing and grammar) all day. Broken up by a 1/2 hour AM recess, 1/2 hour lunch followed by a 1/2 hour recess, and a 1/2 hour PM recess.

So, DH and I were very displeased with this and decided to try private schools. The idea of HS was still foreign to us. So we went to 3 local private schools. A Catholic, a Lutheran and a non-denominational Christian School. Our DS was a big proponent of choosing a shcool. We finally chose the Christian School.

Without getting into everything, he had a HORRIBLE time adjusting and transitioning and I believe there was much much more involved. His confidence level was lowered to practically non-existent. He hated school, he would kick, scream and cry on school mornings. After School, he was depressed for hours. The school CLAIMED nothing was going on there to effect my son. The problem was, aside from him attending THAT school, nothing had changed here!
Well, he started acting out at school. He did not behave like that at home, just there. So the school began asking ME what has changed AT HOME to effect his behavior at school.

Anyway, I don't really know what happened that year - He has never talked about it and the school has never owned up to anything. I know it has deeply effected him.

It was a long year. We brought him back to PS and my happy little boy returned to me almost immediately. Like I said, he is still effected by whatever occurred to him, but he was getting back to his old self.

We still had major concerns with the lack of curriculum at the schools, primarily once we learned that the kids ONLY recieve approximately 1 hour a MONTH of Social Studies and Science!!!

We also had issues with the lack of competition. I know Mark and Theodore read my post on that. Basically 90% of the kids were handed honor roll certificates 1st quarter lthis year. Out of that, about 30% were handed high honor certificates, while the remaining 10% did not. However those remaining 10% were given, gimme awards just to make them not feel left out.

While my son was 1 of the 90% to recieve honor roll. I was annoyed. It no longer seemed to be the honor it once was. However it did boost his confidence level. Which it really needed since the issues in Kindergarten.

However the FINAL straws were...
The schools make parents fill out ALL these forms about where the kids are picked up in the mornings, and dropped off in the afternnoons and who is allowed access to my children.
Our directive was simple. They are to go to the Boys and Girls Club afterschool. Now, for those of you who do not know. Attendance at the B&G Club is not mandatory, so if your child does not attend, it really is not noticed. Kind of like going to the YMCA, you can come and go as you please. If you are there, you swipe in and there is adult supervision.
Anyway, Back in September I was detained after work and ended up at the B&G Club at close to 6pm. I arrived and my 7 year old was not there. Apparently he got on the worng bus and ended up at home. Thankfully he was able to get in, but he was home ALONE for 3 hours.
Since I have NEVER left him unattended at home, we have never taught him how to use the phone beyond calling 911. So, he did not know how to contact me or DH on our cells.

When we called the school the principal told us, once the kids were off school property, they were NOT his concern. OK, great... but he got ON the WRONG bus while ON school property! That is YOUR responsibilty. Really, I did everything as a parent I was supposed to as far as arranging where the kids were to go after school. MY concern was WHO is responsible if SOMETHING happened to MY kid home alone when he got on the wrong bus AT school. DH talked to the superintendent, and the Super agreed and said more supervision at the end of the day in the bus lines will be provided.

Ok great!

The same thing occurred with my 6 year old Last Tuesday. He was home for over 1 hour by himself. DH called the principal. THe kids go to school in 2 different buildings across town from each other, however they have the same principal. The younger one goes to the Early Education Elementary which is Ages 3 through 1st grade. The older one attends school that contains grades 2nd through 4th grade. So neither realizes until they get to the B&G club that the other is not there.

My older son did try to call me... at home to find out where my youngest was. Once again, he did not have my cell. However - which annoys me, is the B&G club did have my cell on file.

DH called the princiipal... it is over a week later... we have heard nothing back. I did legitimately do every thing I needed to in order to remove them from PS.

That happen with my niece, it's almost similar with the stories told here. She was acting shy at school, didn't want to talk to anybody, didn't want to participate in any activity. While at home she is the most active girl who likes to be listened. The same at the soccer club, the drawing classes and with her church and neighborhood friends. She is very social when we got out, she even talks with the cashier at the grocery store. She was being bullied by the other kids, she has a very soft personality. Well, eventually we knew that she would figure out how to get along with the rest of the kids but was it worth? That means that she had to change in order to fit in that environment. Her parents decided to take her out from public schools. She is doing very well now.

Hi! I am new here and have spent the past few hours just taking all the posts in...good and bad. I have homeschooled my two daughters (8 & 6) for the past year. Trust me, my reasoning for coming to homeschool goes along the lines of alot written here. It would take me a book to write down everything that my 8yo went through that brought us to homeschooling. It also brings up some very resentful feelings in me that I really hate rehashing. Perhaps in the future I will go there...just not tonight.

What I would like to point out though is one experience I had that seems to be repeated alot. The fact that the schools when questioned about their wrong doings want to point the finger back to "the home". Seriously. This seems to occur so much that it can not be just meer coincidence. Is it in the training manual for a teacher or something? Reverse psychology perhaps? If so, then this seriously needs to be stopped. A parent should NEVER be made to feel inadequate for having concern for their child. This is so wrong and seeing that it happens over and over is down right disturbing.

I am new here too but not new to homeschooling. I've been homeschooling for 5 years, but decided to place our ds back into school last year. Our son has Asperger Syndrome/PDD-NOS but we didn't know that he had this before I started homeschooling. So issue after issue was brought up by the school and we just had had enough of it. Ds was horribly abused by both the teacher and the students so we decided that I couldn't do any worse by hsing. However, I had a moment of panic last summer and that is why we placed him back into school. I guess the anti-homeschoolers got into my head LOL

Our ds disappeared in front of our eyes and the school said that there wasn't anything wrong with him that getting away from me wouldn't fix. When they said that, I made up my mind that he wouldn't be back next year.

Anyway, ds is doing wonderfully. We have our moments, but he is my happy boy again with no stress and lots of smiles.

I took my daughter out of public school for many reasons. First she wasn't learning anything new. She was in Kindergarten and learning the same things she had known since she was 3 yo. Not to mention she was bored out of her mind. She didn't want to read, she wasn't doing anything as far as math goes and she already knew how to do those things. I also took her out because I had a really bad experience with school. I don't handle the outside world well although I'm learning to but it was go to classes, go home, do home work, eat diner, go to bed, get up do it again. Well I didn't get to know my parents well and I didn't like my teachers who said I'd never learn anything and I'd never become anything. I dropped out of school at 16 yo and didn't pick up a book between then and when I turned 23 then I went and took my GED test and passed it with flying colors. It was then that I realized I already knew what I needed to know in High School my teachers just didn't take the time to figure that out. They also didn't realize that all kids learn differentlly and I was one of them. I learned better in real life. My daughter learns well through books, but she is advanced and the school wouldn't allow her to advance so she was headed up the same road as me. She would have been bored and she is very strongwilled. When she gets bored she just gives up. She did that in Kindergarten. They were testing her and she got so bored that towards the end she just kept telling them she didn't know and they accepted that for an answer instead of telling her that wasn't an answer and she needed to at least try. It made me so mad they told me she didn't know letter sounds and her letters which she had known since she was 3 yo. I was so upset with PS at that point that I vowed never to put her back in unless I had no other choice. So far we've been doing it since May and are doing well.